


Time

by knight_of_thyme (ravenic)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Beta OT4, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Sburb, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/knight_of_thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The game is over.  They have won.  Except they haven’t, quite, because nothing is ever that simple.  They have won, yes, and they finally get to go home, but Dave can’t come.  He has to stay behind, in the Medium, to complete all the time loops and make sure everything is stable.  John, Rose, and Jade have to go home and leave their Knight behind.</p><p>This may be the hardest part of the entire game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the end

**Author's Note:**

> homestuck ends tomorrow what the fuck
> 
> on a different note i did another dumb post-sburb beta ot4 nonsensefic. a note: this is very different from after. for many reasons. in theory i like this one more than after, come to think of it. but whatever.  
> warning: this is angsty as fuck. it gets better, but wow why did i do this to myself.  
> be warned, there is much time shenanigans and weird convoluted time nonsense in this thing. i tried to do the logic thing and mostly failed, so this may or may not actually make sense. but whatever.

And then it was over. The game was won.

Four children stood staring at the door before them. There was silence for a few seconds _(seven and a half seconds exactly)_ , and then Jade make a high-pitched squeaking noise and the spell was broken.

Jade leapt on John with such momentum that the Heir staggered, but he managed to keep them both on their feet. Both of them were laughing hysterically, the kind of laughter that was on the verge of crying. Rose’s hands were over her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. _It’s over. We’ve won._

When Jade jumped off him to run and tackle Rose, John turned, still laughing, to his third friend. But the joy froze on his face when he saw Dave.

The Knight stood stock-still, broken sword still in hand. His face showed none of the joy of the others’ – in contrast, the corners of his mouth were turned down almost imperceptibly, the only difference from his normal pokerface.

“Dave?” John’s blue eyes were wide and confused. Dave took a breath, slow and almost shaky, then gave John a tiny, sad smile that made the Heir’s stomach twist.

“I can’t go.”

John blinked. Jade and Rose had stopped talking and were staring at them. “What?”

The Knight gestured toward the door, which glowed softly, invitingly. He moved as if every bone weighed a ton, as if he could hardly bear to stand at all. “Home. I can’t go with you.”

John’s heart stopped. _No. No no no no no this can’t happen we won we won we get to go home now Dave what are you –_

“Why?” Jade’s eyes were huge, their joy fast being replaced with fear. “Dave, why –”

“I’m Knight of Time. I have to finish the timelines. The time loops, the loose ends, corrections. Stabilizing. I have to make sure everything gets done so that we win. So that we end up here. So that we –” his voice cracked slightly, “So that we get to go home.”

“How… how long will it take?” John asked. “We could wait here, you could –”

 _“No!”_ John had never heard Dave speak like that. “You can’t wait. It’ll take too long.”

Jade opened her mouth, but Dave beat her to the answer. “I don’t know how long, but it’ll be – it’ll be a while. You guys go ahead. I’ll follow you as soon as I can.” The Knight’s voice was tight, and John could see his knuckles clenched white on his sword handle.

John felt as if he had been killed instead of Bec Noir. It felt as if his heart had been stabbed through, and he had to glance down to make sure there was no blood running down his chest _(once, once it happened, but he came back and he’s fine – at least physically. But Dave –)_.

Jade looked the way John felt. “We – we’ll stay with you,” she said, voice wobbling and giant tear-filled green eyes on the verge of spilling over. “I don’t care how long it takes, we can’t –”

 _“No.”_ Dave’s voice was strangled. “You have to go. Now. Please. I – I can’t –”

And then Rose was there, standing in front of Dave, just far back enough that she wasn’t invading his space. Her purple eyes are filled with immense sadness, but her voice is (almost) steady when she speaks. “We’ll go. But we’re going to be counting every second, Dave. Come back to us.”

It’s not a request.

Dave’s voice is the rawest John has ever heard when he responds. “I will.” His entire body is shaking.

It’s not a maybe.

Jade throws her arms around Dave’s shoulders, burying her face in his neck. He hugs her back for just one second, tight as he can, before letting go, and she is holding together just enough that she is able to step back and let him go.

Then Rose. She slides her arms around his waist, under the cape, and presses a kiss to her almost-brother’s forehead. The Seer whispers something into the Knight’s ear, and he hugs her tightly for a moment before they draw apart.

John doesn’t know if he can do this. This is supposed to be the good part, the victory, so why does he feel worse than he ever has in his life, like his lungs are full of concrete, like his heart is being dissected within his own chest?

But Dave turns to him, and John can’t stop. He staggers forward, falling into his best friend’s arms. Scarlet surrounds him – the color of blood, the color of rubies, the color of safety – and he has to put everything he’s got – everything he’s ever had – into not crying. If it’s bad for him, he can’t imagine what Dave is feeling now. Don’t make it worse.

“Take care of them.”

“Be careful.”

And then they have to let go, and John was wrong – _this_ is the worst he’s ever felt. He can barely remember how to breathe, and it’s amazing, the idea that he could ever fly. His chest feels like it’s being crushed by a thousand rocks. Rose and Jade look the same.

And then it’s time to go (time to leave him). Rose takes Jade’s hand in one of hers and John’s in the other, squeezing them both so hard John can feels his bones creak. He squeezes back, just as hard.

There is no ceremony. They are leaving a fourth of their souls behind. They meet eyes one last time – blue and green and purple to red, _please don’t be the last time I can’t survive that I can’t_ – and then they turn, Heir and Witch and Seer, and go through the door (Jade clutches the knob as if it’s to blame for everything, her claws nearly ripping the thing off the panels), and leave their Knight – their last fourth they won’t be whole until he comes home – behind.

There is no time for last words. The door closes without a sound, and Dave Strider is alone.

He waits exactly two and one-third seconds before crumpling to his knees. The game is over, but for a Time player, it goes on. Maybe for a little while, maybe for a long time, maybe for ever.

This is how to break a Knight.

.

.

.

_and i wish that love could save us_

_but were outta time_

_natalia kills, outta time_  



	2. home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kill me in the face homestuck didnt end. i misread the hussie. the end has only begun. fuck.  
> also hi i forgot about this thing for a month please dont hate me  
> i got really mad at this chapter bc i didnt like bits of it but eventually i decided fuckit im just gonna post it anyway  
> so heres another chapter of the sad "dave gets left behind" nonsense i made up like 3 years ago  
> ((ps this chapter isnt so sad this is a happy))

Friday evening. The workweek with the construction company was over. John had his paycheck, he had gotten all the groceries, and he was already started on dinner. Rose was home from her job as a receptionist in the clinic downtown, and Jade had returned from the pet store where she spent her days while she tried to convince the university that yes, she did actually know as much about physics and space and quantum mechanics as she said she did.

Rose was making tea, her knitting still on the couch beside Jade. Jade herself was lying upside-down with her feet hanging over the top of the couch as she flipped through television channels. As John closed the oven door on the cake (from scratch – he would never look at a red spoon with the Batterwitch’s name on it ever again), he had to smile. Some things never changed.

His smile fell as he thought. It had been four years since the Game had ended. John, Jade, and Rose had been sent back to Earth, and almost everything had been perfectly normal. Except that three years had passed since they had gone into the Game. Also, their guardians were dead.

And so began two years of foster care. Of utter hell. John could only be glad that they had been sixteen, instead of the thirteen they had been when the game had begun – then it would have been five years of the torture. They had been separated. Rose had diagnosed all three of them with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – no surprise to any of them, although nobody else had been able to comprehend anything about the three former Game players.

Once they turned eighteen, they had done the only logical thing: move in all together. Nothing mattered except that they all be together again. They had found an apartment, found work, scraped together their money, and then they were okay. Not 100% all right (they would never quite be that again, John thought), but okay. And that was enough, in the end.

It had been two years since then. They had gotten (somewhat) better jobs – there were still too many people who believed Jade was lying about her credentials (dumbasses, you can’t lie about crazy stuff like that and have the knowledge Jade has), Rose still wasn’t a psychologist in her own right (yet – it was only a matter of time), John was still just a construction worker (he liked it fine, but he didn’t think that was what he wanted to do forever; maybe someday he would open a bakery) – and moved into a nice house with a garden for John’s kitchen herbs and Jade’s pumpkins and Rose’s flowers, and space for John’s workshed and Jade’s telescope and Rose’s craftroom. It was nice.

But there was a piece missing. A piece shaped like a clock, like a sword, like a pair of dark aviators, a piece that smelled like strawberries and blood and warmth, a piece that spoke with an not-quite-hidden Texan drawl, a piece with red eyes and white hair that wore a broken record emblazoned like a shield across its heart.

It had been four years since the end of the Game. And Dave was still missing.

They tried to cope, like they had to do with everything. But sometimes they slipped up. Rose had bought four pillows for the new bed. John brought four cookies home from the bakery on the corner once. Jade still frequently set the table for four, and would burst into tears when she realized her mistake.

So, yes. They were okay, but they were definitely not whole. They wouldn’t be whole until they regained the last fourth of themselves, and John didn’t know when that would happen.

Or if. No. Shut up. Dave had promised them. He had promised.

_Just like your dad promised he would always be there._

NO. Someday, Dave would come home and all would be truly well for the first time in forever. Once there were four living in the house, everything would be right again.

A knock at the door startled John out of his thoughts. He shook his head to clear it, calling, “I’ll get it!” to the girls in the living room. Dusting his hands on his jeans, the former Heir went to the door and opened it.

Time stopped. John’s breath froze in his throat, and there was a moment _(Dave would have known exactly how long a moment)_ where his brain couldn’t figure out why. And then it hit him like a sword to the chest.

A man stood on the front porch. His clothes were tattered and dirty, his shoes falling apart. His white-blond hair was too long, brushing his shoulders, and he carried nothing with him except for the pair of dark sunglasses on his face.

John could not move, could not breathe. It couldn’t be him. It had to be him.

Four years after the end of the Game, Dave Strider, former Knight of Time, stood on the porch of the former Heir, Witch, and Seer’s house, and neither Heir nor Knight could speak a single word.

“John? Who’s at the door? Did you –” Jade froze. She stood stock-still for a moment, staring at the two men on the threshold. Then the moment was shattered by her ear-piercing shriek, and she bolted forward.

The once-dogtier collided against Dave with such force that she nearly sent them both crashing down the stairs, but the former Knight managed to keep them both mostly upright. He was smiling now, an almost disbelieving look on his face, fragile, as if he expected all this to be a dream and that he would wake up in a moment. John felt the exact same way, still standing beside the door, still trying to remember how to breathe.

“Jade?” Rose’s voice came from within the house. “Jade, if you’ve attacked the mailman again, I am going to –” Her words broke off with a faint choking sound. John was able to break his paralysis just enough to turn his head and see Rose’s face, pale, eyes and mouth wide in shock, looking just as frozen as John felt.

Dave’s smile was wider now, but somehow sadder, as if he was desperate for his dream not to end. Or John’s dream. Because John still felt in shock, as if he had been struck by lightning. It had been four years. Could Dave really just appear on a random day in August after four years?

John was praying with every molecule of his being that he could.

“Hi, Rose.”

The former Seer let out a faint gasping noise, like someone surfacing after being underwater for far too long. Slowly, so slowly, she moved forward, never looking away from her not-actually-brother’s face. After far too long, she reached him. Moving as if she was pulling herself through thick syrup, she lifted one hand up, touching Dave’s cheek as if she was afraid he would shatter like spun glass if she applied too much force.

Dave covered her hand with one of his, bigger, skin burned against her bone-pale, scarred, but still so familiar after so much time. “I’m home,” he said, so quietly it was almost inaudible.

Jade made an impossibly high-pitched squeaking noise and buried her face against Dave’s side.

Rose covered her mouth with her free hand, tears welling up in her lavender eyes. Then she reached out, taking Dave’s face between her palms, pulling him down to press their foreheads together. She made no sound, but suddenly the Light hero was shaking like a leaf in a storm, as if she was about to crumble into dust.

Suddenly Dave looked up, drawing himself carefully from Rose’s hands, which were quickly taken by Jade. Two steps, and he was right in front of John. For a moment, neither of them moved, Dave still looking as if he was afraid he would disappear and John still afraid that he would.

When John’s hands moved, they did so of their own accord. Up, and up and up _(how was Dave so_ tall _?)_ , and then he was gently tugging at the sunglasses on the former Knight’s face _(the wrong ones – wrong size wrong shape wrong wrong wrong but who cares because his eyes are the same)_. With the barrier removed, red eyes met blue for the first time in four years _(the first time ever in a real world)_ , and the spell over John was broken.

Dave was tall – he had been tall in the Game, and had apparently just kept growing after the other three had left – but John ignored their height difference, launching himself up and trusting the former Knight to catch him (hey, if he had caught Jade with all the momentum of a full tackle, he could catch John jumping on him).

Their lips collided with almost painful force, but John didn’t even notice. He hadn’t seen Dave for almost the entirety of the Game, and even victory hadn’t allowed the Knight to go home. It had been four years since John had seen Dave, and truly, he had never actually seen the other boy – they had only ever met in the Medium.

The past four years had not been kind to the former Knight. John could feel Dave’s bones beneath him, could almost feel the extra time they had spent through each timeline, alpha and every doomed line that had ever branched off and died. Every time Dave had died.

But Dave’s arms were strong around John’s waist, his mouth soft against the former Heir’s. Years and years had passed _(who knew how many, for the Knight of Time?)_ , but suddenly, none of that was important. Dave was alive, he was here, he was kissing John back. And that was all that mattered.

When John finally pulled back, breathless and dizzy with emotion, Dave still had his eyes closed. He opened them slowly, and the sheer amount of feeling John saw there was unbearable.  
John gently knocked his forehead against his friend’s. “Welcome home, Dave,” he whispered, feeling the albino’s eyelashes flutter shut against his cheek.

Then they were both knocked to the ground by an over-emotional Jade, who evidently couldn’t restrain herself any longer. John landed on top of Dave, rolling to one side as Jade fell beside them, wrapping her arms around Dave’s middle and burying her face against his chest, chanting a litany of, “Davedavedavedavedave,” muffled now against the impossibly-familiar (now-too-small) broken-record shirt.

Before John could look up to search for her, Rose was beside them, dropping to her knees, her pale, trembling hands reaching out to thread through her ectosibling’s overlong hair. Dave worked one hand free and reached up, tangling his fingers in hers, and not saying anything when the former Seer squeezed so hard his fingers turned white.

_Home,_ John thought, resting his head on Dave’s shoulder. _He’s home. Finally._

_We’re all home. Four years after the end of the Game, we’ve won at last. We’re safe, we’re alive, we’re together._

_We’re home._

.

.

.

_i have died every day waiting for you_

_christina perri, a thousand years_  



	3. past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand heres the Explanation Chapter  
> this entire thing is bullshit logic, just ignore the lacework of plot holes here. nothing to see, move along.

It wasn’t quite as easy as that, of course. After two years of living together, John, Jade, and Rose had settled into a routine, a lifestyle. John was with the local construction company, Rose had her psych clinic receptionist job, Jade worked for the pet store in between attempts to convince people that she was actually a genius. They had their chores and plans for who cooked when. Jade gardened and Rose knitted and John baked and sometimes would drag them all out to fly kites if the weather was right. They had mostly-settled lives, and no matter how much they had missed Dave, it wasn’t easy to accommodate a new person.

The first night Dave was back was full of talking. Four years was a long time to be apart, and a lot had happened.

The three that had left the Game on time had come back to find that three years had passed. Their guardians were dead. Somehow the paperwork was functional enough that there was no gap of time where they had been in the Game, but that was really the least important thing. Being sixteen and without guardians, John, Jade, and Rose had been put in foster care.

Three teenagers, dealing with what Rose had diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder after playing a video game from hell for three years, had been separated from the fourth member of their quartet, returned to find that their guardians were dead, and had then been separated from each other and placed in foster homes with people who knew nothing of the hell of SBURB, and who could not even be told about it for fear that they would put the kids in a hospital.

Two years. Two years of only being able to communicate through internet chat and phone calls, of suffering through the immediate aftereffects of the Game alone. It had been almost as bad as the Game itself.

The moment they had turned eighteen, they had left their foster families and reunited. That had been one of the best moments of John’s life, marred only by the fact that there was not four people at the reunion. Two years had passed, and there had been no sign of Dave.

There was nothing the three could do but move on. A tiny apartment at first, working wherever they could, but eventually a slightly larger apartment, and finally the house they had now. The jobs had changed too; all three were fairly happy where they were, although Rose was still going to school at night to become a psychologist in her own right, and Jade wanted to do crazy science things John would never understand, and John himself was still toying with the idea of opening a bakery.

The gap, though, the Dave-shaped hole in their lives, had never gone away. Rose had developed the theory that Dave would return to them four years, one month, and three days after the Game ended. She had gotten almost manic about it, and had spent that day wound tighter than John had ever seen her. And when the sun had set and no albino boy had magically appeared at their door, Rose had collapsed into a depression so bad that she had been unable to get out of bed for days afterward, and had nearly given up on Dave coming home at all. Jade would either burst into tears or punch through a wall at the slightest mention of him, and John was incapable of feeling anything except a deep, impossible longing whenever he thought about the Knight. It was even worse than thinking about his father – at least he knew Dad was gone, instead of this horrible not-knowing – not knowing when Dave would come back, or if he ever would. Not knowing how he would have changed, if he would be just as they had left him or if he would be unrecognizable. Not knowing anything at all.

Then it was Dave’s turn. Watching Dave sit up just a little, John wondered if he really wanted to know what had happened in the last four years for the Knight. But another part of him wanted to know – had to know – and so he listened.

Dave didn’t go into much detail about what had happened while he was still in the game. “Time shenanigans,” he said dismissively, waving one hand lazily. “I probably couldn’t explain it if I tried.” But John was watching Rose, staring at her science-twin with narrowed eyes, and he knew that she would get it all out of him later.

At hearing about Rose’s four-year-one-month-three-days theory, Dave burst out laughing. The other three stared at him, flabbergasted. The former Knight caught his breath and looked up at them with a bitter smile. “You got it right, Rose. The Game had a fucked-up sense of humor, of course it let me out on some day involving 413.”

Rose opened her mouth, clearly shocked, then closed it again. “But… you weren’t there,” she said, almost too quietly. “I counted, Dave, I checked everything and you weren’t –”

“I was,” Dave interrupted. “The Game dumped you all at your old houses, right? Why would it make an exception for me?”

 _Oh my god._ “You reappeared in Houston?” John blurted, eyes wide.

Dave sat back, a bitter smirk on his face. “Yep. Roof of my old apartment complex. ’Course, there were other people living in it by then. Game dumped me on the roof with nothing at all, seven years after I left.

“I couldn’t even find you guys for the longest time. Been hitchhiking and walking all over the goddamn country, looking for a John Egbert, or a Jade Harley, or a Rose Lalonde. Took me three months to find you, and another to get here.

“So here I am. Four years is just fashionably late, after all.”

John, Jade, and Rose were all silent, staring.

 _One thing has changed for sure,_ John thought, gazing at the other former Game player. _Dave used to be pretty good at hiding his emotions, at keeping that poker face on all the time. But now, he’s emotioning everywhere. I can read him like a book. Maybe it’s the time he spent alone, and forgot how to hide it, but Current Dave Strider is not Past Dave Strider, the unreadable, poker-faced Dave Strider of four years ago. Not anymore._

Rose was the first to speak. Keeping both her face and her voice very even and calm, she said, “Four years for us. Dave, how long were you in the Game?”

That was a question nobody wanted to hear, nor its answer, but it had to be asked eventually, and its response given someday.

Dave’s voice was tight. “During the Game itself, or in the after-time?”

“Both.” Rose’s voice was quiet now. She knew she didn’t want to know.

Dave didn’t look at any of them when he answered. “I lived about three times your time, in the Game, and after too. With three years in the Game, and four years after, I spent…” he paused, then took a deep breath. “I lived in the Game for twenty-one years.”

John couldn’t breathe. Dave had lived for nine years with them, and twelve on his own, doing whatever Time stuff he had to do to make sure that the Game ended.

A tiny smile marked Dave’s face. “Congratulations, guys,” he said quietly, “you’re now living with a thirty-four-year-old.”

“But you don’t look thirty-four,” Jade blurted, hands clenched into fists in her lap.

“Yeah,” Dave’s smile became a tiny bit more real. “The one good thing the Game gave me. It decided to make me the same age as you guys, instead of adding up all the Time-travel years. So if anything good came of this shit, it’s that I’m not fifteen years older than you all, ’cause that would be creepy as hell.”

Anything good. If anything good came out of playing a game made purely for death and destruction, anything good coming from a game that destroyed the universe, killed everyone (including them – many times over), if anything good came from being broken, over and over in ways that no one could fully heal from and then spat into a new made world that remembered nothing – if anything good came from all of that, it was that Dave wasn’t fifteen years older than they were.

At least. John’s life had become a game of _it could be worse,_ of _at least it isn’t that._ At least Dave was not fifteen years older than John and Jade and Rose. At least they had all made it out alive, eventually. At least they were together. Now.

Now they had Dave back. After four years mostly-alone and then finally the three of them together (for Dave, a lot longer than four years, and most of it spent totally alone, dealing with Time stuff that nobody else could understand), they were whole again.

Things were different now. None of them could care less about cooking that night, so they got takeout (a bittersweet reminder, John could tell, for Dave – bringing back memories of a shitty Houston apartment and a seemingly omnipotent older brother and greasy Chinese takeout from the place down the street). The talking never stopped, John and Rose and Jade telling Dave everything that had happened in the last four years. It was selective narration, skipping most of the foster-care hell, passing over the fear and the PTSD and the nightmares and the loneliness, leaving the nice stories, the funny ones, the heartfelt ones – but even not too much of that; they all knew too much emotion and none of them would ever stop crying ever again.

John knew that Dave knew that they weren’t telling the whole truth, but he never called them out on it. He just sat there, laughing sometimes, occasionally interjecting some sarcastic comment. And John knew that Dave was only really listening with half an ear, was really just watching them, soaking in their presence, slowly absorbing the fact that they were alive, that they were here, that they were never leaving him again. John knew that Dave knew that he knew what the Knight was thinking, but neither of them said a word about it.

John could see the way that Rose watched Dave, piercing and yet oh-so-careful, afraid that her almost brother would break even though she knew that if he had held together for this long that he would never break for anything in any universe.

John knew that Jade was watching them all, desperate to be reassured that everything would be normal now. It wouldn’t, she knew – they all knew – but they were all content to pretend a little, just for now. The real talking, all the difficult stuff, could come later. For now, they were together, and that was all that John cared about.

.

.

.

_i wish that i could be like the cool kids_

_'cause all the cool kids, they seem to get it_

_i wish that i could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids_

_echosmith, cool kids_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUCK  
> I FUCKED IT UP  
> THEY WERE IN THE GAME FOR MORE THAN 3 YEARS  
> FUHHHHHHHH  
> well then.  
> ive been so mad at editing this chapter, im not even gonna fix that. time is bullshit, thats my explanation. maybe ill go back and fix it later, but for now fuck it. i dont need logic.  
> my attempt at why it took dave 4 years after the game (in linear years, not time-travel ones), was that there wasnt just the time loops to finish. there were the loops off of those, and some off of those, and some stuff had to be done in a particular order. if you wanted a reason for that. which you probably didnt.  
> im gonna rename this chapter Fuck Logic I'm A Time Traveler. be proud of me.
> 
> EDIT hi i made a tumblr for my homestuck shit at long last so if you like this piece of ridiculousness i can be hunted down at [knightofthyme.tumblr.com](knightofthyme.tumblr.com)


	4. complete

Dave stops dead still when he sees the bedroom, with its one (very large) bed.

Rose looks at him worriedly. “If you want, we can –”

“No,” he interrupts, his voice rough. “I – it’s fine. Unless… unless you’d rather –”

It’s his turn now to be interrupted. “We’d rather you be with us, Dave,” Jade says, giving him a little headbutt. “Just because you’re late to the party doesn’t mean we’re gonna make you sleep on the couch.”

Dave still doesn’t move. John can see his face, and wow the Knight really has lost any last shred of that old poker face he used to wear constantly like armor. He can see fear, and worry, and, somewhere, just a little bit of hope. So he smiles and gives his friend a small shove. “Come on, Dave. It’s late, and we’re all tired. Let’s just sleep, and we’ll figure stuff out in the morning.”

The Knight still doesn’t look entirely convinced. But when Rose takes his hand and Jade gives him another headbutt – harder this time, it really is late and she’s tired and ready to sleep and Dave is in the way – he takes a small step forward, and then another, and in a few minutes they are all piled into the bed.

John can feel Dave’s body tense when Rose clicks the light out. He leans against his friend more, hoping that his presence can help the other man calm down, and to his surprise, it works. Dave’s breathing eases and his muscles relax, and John can hear Jade make a happy noise from across Dave’s body. The bed creaks slightly as Rose shifts, pressing her forehead to her ectobiobrother’s shoulder. Jade’s hand seeks out John’s across the bed, lacing their fingers together across Dave’s side, and John lets out a breath he didn’t know that he had been holding.

Slowly, the room settles into quiet. Dave is the first one to fall asleep, and John can feel in the way that he lies completely limp, entirely unconscious, how tired the former Knight really is. Twenty-one years in the game has wreaked havoc on his body and mind, and John can’t remember a time in the entire Game that Dave has ever truly slept like this. Probably even before the Game, if even half of the Texan’s horror stories about swords and puppets and brothers are to be believed.

Then it’s Jade. She’s usually the first to sleep, often worn out from running around and thinking too much about things, but their newly-returned Knight has beaten her to the title this time. She snores lightly, shifting around and snuffling as she sleep-burrows her way underneath Rose’s pillow. In all her antics – the girl is almost as bad when she’s asleep as when she is actually awake – the former Witch never lets go of John’s hand, even when she almost drags him across Dave and Rose’s bodies in some weird sleep move.

Rose sleeps next. John can pinpoint the exact moment the former Seer shifts from wakefulness to slumber, an almost imperceptible relaxation, the change from so many thoughts to sleep, tiny signs that John has only learned after living in close quarters with her for two years. Rose is usually the last to fall asleep – yet another reason why it’s hard to tell when it actually happens – but the excitement of the day has obviously worn her out, and so she sleeps.

John is the last to fall asleep. He lies awake for a time longer, staring at the faintly-moonlit ceiling. Dave is back. They are whole again.

It’s not going to be that easy, of course. When is anything ever easy for them? John can remember what it had been like for him and the others in the time right after the Game. That bad, and they had only been in the Game for three years. What Dave must be like, after seven – no, after twenty-one years, John can’t even fathom. Factor in the fact that twelve of those years were spent without the other three, and he isn’t even sure how Dave is functioning at all. That’s another question, really – how well is Dave actually functioning, and how much is a façade? It won’t be easy to add someone to the household, but anything else is out of the question. Who cares about jobs or finances or anything else when the last part of their souls has finally returned to them?

The hard parts can wait. The PTSD, the nightmares, the readjustment to what used to be normal – it can all wait. They have all the time in the world, now.

The lights are out, but John has never felt more like he was glowing. A darkness he had hardly noticed has lifted inside him, burned off by something tall and red and alive, and he knows Rose and Jade feel the same.

The room doesn’t feel cavernous and empty the way it does on some nights, or too-small and choking like it does on other ones. It’s warm and soft and filled with the three people John loves more than anything in the whole world (and it’s three now, finally, after so long waiting and hoping and not thinking about what if he breaks his promise and doesn’t come back. He doesn’t have to worry about that any more, not with Dave sleeping the sleep of the exhausted but alive and here, so he can sleep all he wants for now).

Only now did John notice how strange time had felt without the Knight – the way things seemed to drag on forever, or went by too fast. Little things, almost imperceptible, but the moment that door had opened and red eyes had met blue for the first time in four years (or twelve, depending on who you asked), something had clicked, and time had returned to its proper track at last.

John hadn’t realized how hard it had been to breathe for all these years, waiting for the last quarter of his soul. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off his chest, like he can fly again. But he doesn’t need to fly. Why would he? Everything he could ever want is right here, alive and warm and sleeping and within arm’s reach. He doesn’t need to fly anywhere.

Time has slowed to a crawl, but in the best way, preserving the moment like they’re all caught in the purest of honey. It feels like they can stay here for ever. And why not? There are four of them now (four at last). The light has returned, they are in a safe, warm space, they can breathe, they have all the time in the world.

Dawn will come, eventually, but for now they are just four children – because they still are, children trapped in a game, except they aren’t trapped, not anymore. None of them are trapped there anymore. They are free now, but that can be hard to realize sometimes. It will sink in, someday. But for now, they are four children (not players, not heirs or seers or witches or knights, not gods, not anymore), and they are together, and they are sleeping soft sleeps free of dreams or nightmares and for now, for this moment in time, that is enough for them.  
They will sleep easy now. They are whole again.

.

.

.

_just close your eyes_

_the sun is going down_

_you’ll be alright_

_no one can hurt you now_

_come morning light_

_you and i’ll be safe and sound_

_taylor swift ft. the civil wars, safe and sound_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its done  
> i wrote this like 3 years ago and now its out and complete and existing in the real world  
> if you liked this story, thanks. i know it didnt make a ton of sense and was a little all over the place, but i had fun with it (not so much with editing, but thats life i guess), and im glad you enjoyed it
> 
> i also exist on tumblr as [knightofthyme](knightofthyme.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> why does my brain hate dave


End file.
